Word Counter

How to use the word counter

1. Type in the box or paste text from Word, Google Docs, an email or a web page. Formatting is ignored; only the characters count.
2. Read the six counts under the box. They update with every key press, so you can trim a paragraph and watch the total fall.
3. Check the Character limits panel if the text is going somewhere with a cap, such as a text message or a post on X. Anything over the limit turns red.
4. Use Copy counts to paste the totals into an assignment cover sheet or a brief.

Nothing is saved. If you refresh the page the box is empty again, so keep your own copy of anything important.

Worked example

Press Try sample text and the box fills with this short paragraph:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. It's a well-known pangram, which means it uses every letter of the English alphabet at least once! Typists have practised with it since the late 1800s.

How words and sentences are counted

Word processors disagree on edge cases, so it helps to know the exact rules this counter follows:

• Words are runs of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks, as long as they contain at least one letter or digit. A lone dash or bullet symbol is not a word.
• Hyphenated words such as mother-in-law count once. Contractions such as don't count once.
• Numbers count as words, so 2026 and 3.5 each add one.
• Sentences end at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis followed by a space or the end of the text. Abbreviations like "e.g. this" may be counted as an extra sentence.
• Paragraphs are blocks separated by at least one empty line.
• Characters are counted as Unicode characters, so an Urdu letter or a simple emoji counts as one character. Emoji built from several parts, such as skin-tone or family emoji, count as more than one.

Because of these rules, Microsoft Word or Google Docs may give a total that differs by one or two on text with URLs, em dashes glued between words, or file names. For an assignment with a strict limit, check the count in the tool your teacher or editor uses.

Words, pages and reading time

Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for non-fiction found by Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies. Page counts are a rough guide for 12 pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins; a different font or spacing changes them a lot.

If you are writing a speech, expect to speak more slowly than you read silently. Time yourself reading one paragraph aloud and scale up from there.

Character limits and the SMS 70-character rule

The limits panel compares your character count with common caps. Most are simple, but text messages have a catch. A standard SMS holds 160 characters only when every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet, which covers basic Latin letters, digits and common punctuation. Add one character outside it, such as an Urdu or Arabic letter, a curly quote pasted from a word processor, or an emoji, and the whole message switches to Unicode (UCS-2), which fits only 70 characters per message. The counter detects this and changes the SMS limit automatically. The check is close but not perfect, since a few accented letters are in GSM-7, so treat it as a warning, not a guarantee.

Platforms change their caps from time to time. The figures here were correct for standard accounts at the time of writing; check the app before a deadline.

Accuracy and limits

Counts are exact for the rules above. Reading time is an average and real readers vary widely. The "most used words" list skips about sixty common English words such as the and with, so it is most useful for spotting a word you have repeated by accident. Very long texts (several hundred thousand words) may make typing feel slow on older phones; the counts still come out right.

Frequently asked questions